Tag: extract

#BlogTour #Extract The Garfield Conspiracy by Owen Dywer @midaspr @libertiespress

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Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for The Garfield Conspiracy by Owen Dywer which was published on 7th September by Liberties Press. I’m delighted to be able to bring you an extract from the book. My thanks to Sofia at Midas PR for inviting me to take part in the tour. Do be sure to check out the reviews by the other book bloggers taking part in the tour.

The Garfield ConspiracyAbout the Book

Richard Todd, an award-winning writer, is outwardly successful but inwardly plagued by uncertainties. Worst of all, he can’t seem to write anymore. When a bright young editor, Jenny Lambe, arrives on his doorstep to work with him on his latest book, about the assassination of US president James Garfield, his life is sent spinning off in a new direction.

President Garfield was killed by Charles Guiteau, who was tried and hanged for the murder. But was he acting alone, or was there a more sinister force at work? Richard hears Guiteau’s voice in his head, and as his relationship with Jenny deepens, he is visited by other characters in the drama. Are they helping Richard solve the mystery surrounding Garfield’s murder – or pushing him further towards the edge?

A remarkable, disturbing portrait of a middle-aged man torn between his carefully constructed life and new adventures which may beckon, in the present and the past, from one of Ireland’s most exciting emerging authors.

Format: Paperback (256 pages)            Publisher: Liberties Press
Publication date: 7th September 2021 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Find The Garfield Conspiracy on Goodreads

Extract from The Garfield Conspiracy by Owen Dwyer

“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs.” Richard, picking up Jenny’s copy of The Bell Jar, read its opening sentence aloud. Aware of his weakness for distraction, he threw it on to the armchair and returned his attention to the laptop. Following some time considering the eternity of its dark grey screen, he turned it on. This he did with a sense of achievement, for having done something.

The terror of hearing Guiteau the previous day had sent him running back to bed. Once safely under the duvet, he pressed his hands over his ears and tried to expel the voice from his head. The memory of the conversation – for Guiteau could not talk directly to him under the “bed is safe” rule – kept replaying itself over and over, at varying speeds and volume. Eventually, and with mystifying suddenness, the loop stopped, and common-sense, creeping into the silence, told him the voice had not been real and therefore could not hurt him. Buoyed with this certainty, he had a shower and functioned normally for the rest of the day – which meant staring at daytime television until Jenny got home.

The Bell Jar was just another book now, in his collection, though at the time of its purchase, this small paperback had been a well-thought-through instrument of seduction. How had Leonard Cohen put it? “Seems so long ago.” Picking up his notebook with a sigh, he began to read the half-page of mangled prose he had written that morning. With neither the conviction to scrap it nor the energy to sift through it for something salvageable, he sat reading it softly to himself, returning to the beginning as soon as he had finished. Twenty minutes passed on the clock on the bottom of the screen, before his concentration was broken by the shadow of a crow passing over the skylight, followed by the clattering of its claws on the rooftiles. With the delicacy of ritual, he slowly closed the book and replaced it on top of some printed pages of nonsense from the previous week, and returned his attention to the laptop. With another sigh, this one through his nose, he clicked open the photo-gallery. There, a growing collection of snaps of him and Jenny formed the beginning of a new history. Even her photos – those images of her smiling face – were enough to give him hope. Somewhere inside the muffled chambers of his conscience, he knew he was exploiting her youth: she was fresh; he was stale. Her future was like a colourful bunch of balloons in a bright blue sky; his, a used condom in a gutter. And he was feeding on her vivacity like a parasite, shrivelling her heart as he engorged his own.

“My dear chap.” It was the original American voice, with its slow edge of sadness. “You mustn’t be too hard on yourself.”

Richard turned, and this time there was someone in the armchair. Someone who looked like James Garfield. He was flipping through the pages of The Bell Jar but put the book down to look directly at Richard.

“Oh, I think I can be hard on myself, Mr President.” Richard began shaking, like a wounded beast.

“Please, you must call me James when we’re alone. And you must not be afraid. You have nothing to fear from me.”

Garfield filled the armchair with his imposing bulk, but his eyes were what captivated. Though tired and sunken, they emanated an intelligent steel-blue sympathy. “I’m afraid I’ve screwed everything up, James.”

“You are not the first.”

“No, I don’t suppose I am. Still, doesn’t stop the pain. It rings in my head like a bell.” Garfield nodded his great head slowly. “I too had a liaison, you know. Not dissimilar to your own.”

“I know. I came across it in Millard’s biography.”

“Yes,” he said distantly, rubbing a forefinger and thumb through his beard. “Milliard.” They proceeded to have a discussion about Destiny of the Republic. Garfield, though impressed with the book, was not comfortable with some aspects of the treatment of the “spoils” issue. Blaine, he felt, had been unfairly depicted, and he thought the complexity of Conkling’s personality had not been fully explicated. They settled presently into an agreeable silence, which was broken by Garfield.

“Yes, old fellow,” he said, eyes mellowing. “I too have known transgression. She, like your Jenny, was much younger, and very striking.”

“How did it come about?” Richard asked, not knowing what else to say.

“I was away from home at the time, and in truth my relationship with Lucretia was at a particularly low point.”

Though feeling awkward to hear such a revelation from someone he had just met, never mind someone of Garfield’s stature, Richard politely enquired: “What was the problem?”

“There is no need for you to feel uncomfortable, old boy. I’m pleased to have someone to talk to about this.”

It was evident Garfield was the type of person who rarely took offence and was happy to discuss any subject in a relaxed way, Richard was feeling more and more comfortable in his company. “Please,” he said, in his telephone voice. “Do go on.”

“When we were married at first, Crete was quite cold, you know. Like me, she came from a Church of Christ background, and her mind was so filled with the convoluted axioms and biblical interpretations of that religion, that she found it difficult to allow joy into her heart.”

“Did it manifest itself in the bedroom?” Richard was curious to know if the indifferent sex between himself and Valerie, after he had fallen for Jenny, was a universal consequence of the transition from one woman to another.

If that small taster has whetted your appetite, you can find purchase links below.

Publisher | Hive | Amazon UK
Links provided for convenience only, not as part of an affiliate programme

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Owen DwyerAbout the Author

Owen Dwyer is a prize-winning short-story writer who has won the Hennessy Emerging Fiction Prize, the Silver Quill (twice), the Smiling Politely Very Very Short Story competition, the South Tipperary County Council Short Story competition and the Biscuit Fiction Prize, and has had stories published in Whispers and Shouts magazine. His previous novel, Number Games, was published to glowing reviews by Liberties Press in 2019, and follows The Cherry-picker (2012) and The Agitator (2004). Owen lives in Dublin with his wife and their three children. (Photo/bio credit: Publisher author page)

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#Extract Appointment in Tehran by James Stejskal @Casemate_UK

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I’m delighted today to bring you an extract from Appointment in Tehran by James Stejskal which will be published by Casemate Publishing in hardback on 15th October and is available to pre-order here. It will appeal to those who like plenty of action in their historical fiction and its subject matter is incredibly timely given recent world events.

Appointment in TehranAbout the Book

When radical Iranian students seize the U.S. Embassy compound in Tehran and take over fifty diplomats hostage the U.S. President has to negotiate with a government that wants only to humiliate the United States. When talks fail, the President must turn to the military to bring the Americans home by force.

As preparations are made for an audacious rescue, an American intelligence officer hides alone in a Tehran safehouse with a secret. He is protecting a powerful weapon known as the Perses Device, which is now at risk of being captured and employed against the United States. The Agency Director orders that it must be brought out at all costs.

But as a small American team clandestinely enters Tehran to lead the way for the rescue force, a traitor spills the secret and KGB Spetsnaz operatives begin their own search for the weapon.

At the last minute, one more American is added to the advance team – his sole mission is to get the Agency officer and the Perses device to safety. When the rescue mission fails, only two Americans are left to run the gauntlet of enemy agents and get the weapon out. Getting in was easy…

Format: Hardcover (304 pages)          Publisher: Casemate Publishing
Publication date: 15th October 2021 Genre: Historical Fiction , Military, Action

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Extract from Appointment in Tehran

In his apartment several blocks from the university campus, Abdul Mezad knelt on a carpet facing the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina and prayed. He was one of the few people in the city who knew what was about to happen. Although the Shah had been overthrown and the revolutionary republic proclaimed months earlier, there was still an infuriating presence in the city: the den of spies – the American Embassy – that housed the very same snakes who had installed the Shah onto his Peacock Throne. It had been a quarter-century, but many Iranians still felt the insult deeply – that the Americans could overthrow their elected government and install a puppet Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It was a brazen act by insolent foreigners who knew nothing about the true nature of Iran and its people. The infidel cared only for Iran’s oil.

After his prayers, Abdul walked in the drizzling rain through the stirring city. The early morning commuters passing him would have assumed he was a student, dressed in faded jeans and a loose sweater topped off with an olive-drab fatigue jacket he had bought cheaply in a market long ago. But anyone who looked at him closely might have reconsidered, not that Abdul cared. The intensity of a zealot on a Jihad burned in his eyes, his vision reduced to tunnel vision, focused only on his destination and little else. He had a mission, and if he was to be a martyr this day, so be it.

It was cool, as November mornings in Tehran often were. To the north, the Alborz mountains were shrouded in a blanket of gray cloud. The day had started out quietly enough for a city that had been tense for months as internecine squabbles, demonstrations, and street fights broke out across the country between the moderates, the communists, and Islamists vying for influence. The hard-liners of the Council of the Islamic Revolution had only tenuous control.

That would soon change.

The shops were still shuttered. Despite the dampness in the air, the smell of barbari baking in the wood- and coal-burning ovens wafted through the neighborhood. Abdul ignored his hunger; there would be time enough for food later. Walking with determination, he covered the few kilometers to his place of appointment rapidly. He turned into Taleqani Street and, in front of him, he saw his goal. Abdul strode on, over the glistening, damp concrete and stopped outside the embassy gates where crowds had started to gather. He glared at the Americans inside the fence who looked back at him with a stare that conveyed their sense that this day would be unlike any they had experienced before. The Marine Security Guards gathered in small groups near the gates, the front entrance, and even on the roof as the embassy staff hurried to their desks inside the Chancery. They were worried; they were too few to contain the threatening crowd that gathered beyond the fence.

As the city slowly awakened, the crowd outside grew to hundreds, then thousands of young people outside the 27-acre embassy compound. As the rain tapered off, the throngs grew, made up mostly of students who had not attended school since the uprising had begun the previous January. Most believed they were there for just a peaceful protest, but the rain had dampened their spirits. Wistfully, some thought of going home, out of the damp, to enjoy a cup of tea and some savory cakes. They wanted the Americans out of their new Islamic republic, but had not come with violence in mind. They were not aware of the real plan, the plan a small group, the “Brethren,” had in mind. Today, they would finally swing the balance of power over to Ruhollah Khomeini.

Abdul was aware of the plan. He was one of the “Brethren,” a true insider. They were the core element, even closer knit than the “Islamic Brothers.” They were the vanguard of the revolution. While the placards and shouts outside the compound only demanded that the Americans leave Iran, the Brethren had other ideas. They wanted to consolidate the Imam’s power and eliminate rival militias. By seizing the embassy, they would not only break the links between the supporters of the provisional government, who wanted a “democratic Iran,” and the Americans, they would also destroy the power of the leftists who remained a threat to the Islamic revolution.

While hundreds of young men and women kept the Marines busy on the perimeter of the facility, others climbed over the barrier fence and engaged in a tug of war over the halyards of the flagpole. These distractions occupied the Marine guards. Unseen in the crowd, a small group of men pulled bolt cutters from bags and severed the chains that secured the perimeter gates. With that last physical and psychological barrier breached, the masses outside were easily pushed to storm the compound.

James StejskalAbout the Author

James Stejskal is an author, military historian, and conflict archaeologist. To gain inspiration and research his writings, he spent 35 years serving with the US Army Special Forces and the Central Intelligence Agency in interesting places like Africa, Europe, the Balkans, the Near and Far East.

He is the author of A Question of Time, a Cold War military & espionage thriller, as well as the non-fiction books Special Forces Berlin: Clandestine Cold War Operations of the US Army’s Elite, 1956–1990 and Masters of Mayhem: Lawrence of Arabia and the British Military Mission to the Hejaz.

He lives in Virginia with his wife Wanda and an Anatolian Shepherd named Cheena. (Photo/bio credit: Goodreads author page)

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